Maladaptive responses of the failed male: the journey towards extreme incel ideology

Incels have increasingly become the subject of academic, law enforcement, and media attention following their association with a series of deadly attacks. However, research and reporting have tended to present incels dichotomously; at one end, they are mentally unwell, misunderstood men, while at the other, they are terrorists and uniquely misogynistic. Incels are a heterogeneous and complex online community, where vulnerabilities and violent misogyny coexist. Despite the wealth of literature on incels in recent years, a theory of incel extremism, namely how individual men become completely embedded incels, is yet to be fully realised. Drawing on empirical research involving a digital ethnography of dedicated incel sites as well as mainstream social media platforms, this chapter contributes to conceptualising the journey to inceldom. The authors consider how certain men negotiate social isolation, romantic rejection, and problematic masculine expectations, exhibiting maladaptive emotional and psychological responses to these complex challenges. Simultaneously, these young and adolescent men are also navigating the online terrain, which not only reinforces and validates skewed understandings of these issues but also amplifies them. Given the inherently interdisciplinary nature of this topic, the chapter highlights the need for future research on incel extremism to involve greater integration of different disciplinary and novel theoretical perspectives.